Miracle baby born after full-term ovarian pregnancy

Published: May 31, 2008 | 7085th good news item since 2003

Surviving all odds, baby Durga has become perhaps the world’s first baby to be born after a full-term ovarian pregnancy at the Darwin Private Hospital in Australia’s Northern Territory. Ovarian pregnancies – where the foetus grows in the ovary instead of the uterus – are a one in 40,000 occurrence and usually terminate before 10 weeks, but a healthy 2.8 kg baby Durga arrived in the world Thursday morning after a full term 38 week pregnancy.

The baby’s Sri Lankan parents, Ravi and Meera Thangarajah, who had migrated to Australia 20 years ago, were thrilled at what doctors are calling a “miracle baby”.

“The doctor and the paediatrician came in and told me it was like a miracle baby, you’re one of the luckiest men in the world at the moment,” said 40-year-old Ravi, who is an IT consultant.

Meera, 34, who works as an administrative officer at the Charles Darwin University, had no inkling that the pregnancy was not normal until she underwent a caesarean section at the hospital.

When doctors began the caesarean operation, they were shocked to find the baby had grown inside Meera’s ovary, a kind of a risky ectopic pregnancy.

According to reports, her scans over recent months showed nothing untoward and it was only in the operation theatre that the doctors discovered the egg had fertilised in the ovary instead of the uterus.

Had the ectopic pregnancy been detected in the early stages, Meera would have been advised by doctors to abort the pregnancy.

An ovarian pregnancy can cause life threatening complications for both mother and child. It causes severe pain and bleeding in the early weeks of pregnancy for most women, but astonishingly Meera had no symptoms.

Obstetrician Andrew Miller told the local media that an ovarian pregnancy to go through to a full-term baby was “unheard of”.

“She’s an extremely lucky lady to be here with a live baby at 38 weeks with an ovarian pregnancy,” he said.

Midwife Dee Keogh told the media: “We could see the baby straight away. Normally the baby is inside the uterus, which we have to cut open, but in this case the baby was just inside a thin membrane … We could see the baby clearly, its hair, all its features. I think everybody just thought wow – she is one lucky lady.”

As for being named after the Hindu Goddess Durga, the parents told IANS: “It was chosen before the baby was born simply because we liked it.” Durga is a little sister for six-year-old Gayatri.